Love in the Time of Cholera

March 12, 1988
The ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America that have distinguished Garcia Marquez's Nobel Prize-winning fiction since his landmark work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, persist in this turn-of-the-century chronicle of a unique love triangle. It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly translated, as rich in ideas as in humanity. The illustrious and meticulous Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his proud, stately wife Fermina Daza, respectively past 80 and 70, are in the autumn of their solid marriage as the drama opens on the suicide of the doctor's chess partner. Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, a disabled photographer of children, chooses death over the indignities of old age, revealing in a letter a clandestine love affair, on the "fringes of a closed society's prejudices.'' This scenario not only heralds Urbino's demise soon afterwhen he falls out of a mango tree in an attempt to catch an escaped parrotbut brilliantly presages the novel's central themes, which are as concerned with the renewing capacity of age as with an anatomy of love. We meet Florentino Ariza, more antihero than hero, a mock Don Juan with an undertaker's demeanor, at once pathetic, grotesque and endearing, when he seizes the memorably unseemly occasion of Urbino's funeral to reiterate to Fermina the vow of love he first uttered more than 50 years before. With the fine detailing of a Victorian novel, the narrative plunges backward in time to reenact their earlier, youthful courtship of furtive letters and glances, frustrated when Fermina, in the light of awaking maturity, realizes Florentino is an adolescent obsession, and rejects him. With his uncanny ability to unearth the extraordinary in the commonplace, Garcia Marquez smoothly interweaves Fermina's and Florentino's subsequent histories. Enmeshed in a bizarre string of affairs with ill-fated widows while vicariously conducting the liaisons of others via love poems composed on request, Florentino feverishly tries to fill the void of his unrequited passion. Meanwhile, Fermina's marriage suffers vicissitudes but endures, affirming that marital love can be as much the product of art as is romantic love. When circumstances both comic and mystical offer Fermina and Florentino a second chance, during a time in their lives that is often regarded as promising only inevitable degeneration toward death, Garcia Marquez beautifully reveals true love's soil not in the convention of marriage but in the simple, timeless rituals that are its cement. 100,000 first printing; first serial to the New Yorker; BOMC main selection.

February 27, 1989
In this chronicle of a unique love triangle, the Nobel laureate's trademark ``ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America'' persist. ``It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly translated, as rich in ideas as in humanity,'' praised PW . 250,000 first printing.

March 1, 2014

Marquez's (One Hundred Years of Solitude) tale of romance and heartbreak spans decades. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall hopelessly in love in their youth, but when Fermina forsakes Florentino's love to marry a wealthy doctor, he is anything but dissuaded. He spends a lifetime waiting for her; no woman could ever fill her place in his heart. Romance is the only thing that he can live for, and as long as Fermina lives, even with another man, his heart will keep beating in the hope that he can win her back. This story of unrequited love is unsurpassed in its eloquence, tragedy, and redemption and beautifully read by Armando Duran, whose strong voice does an excellent job with the Spanish names and language. VERDICT A wonderful classic for fans of narrative and historical literature. ["This is a compelling exploration of the myths we make of love. Highly recommended," read the review of the Knopf hc, LJ 3/15/88.]--Erin Cataldi, Johnson Cty. P.L., Franklin, IN

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